Evaluation

   This final Context in Practice module has certainly given me the forceful awakening that I needed to get my head together for the next two modules. I am not at all satisfied with the work that I have done for this module. And despite how much effort I put into it, a huge part of me knows that I could have done so much better. My performance has certainly deteriorated during this module as compared to the past two years, 
  
   I wish to stay optimistic during situations such as this, however, and it is certainly not to say that these past months have not been a complete loss. I believe that I have learnt so much more about video games and animation from the research that I have gathered for my dissertation, as well as received a much needed lesson during my struggles with both my dissertation and practical. I now have a whole new perspective on the topic that I had chosen to write about in the first place, and I hope that that will allow me to further improve in the game concept that I had been working on as my practical responses. I will certainly continue to develop Lurk even after this module has come to an end, and I know now that there will be so many ways to improve on it.

   I wish to further improve on my drawing skills as well, I realised in the past weeks that I was struggling while I was attempting to draw my characters in more dynamic poses and perspectives, two things that pay huge contribution to an animated performance (Or any sort of performance). I also must be more organised for my next big project, so I will not end up panicking over where all my work files are like I had done for this module.

   And after being reminded of the immense potential that Adobe After Effects holds at the very last minute, I am very keen on refamiliarising myself with that software in hopes of using it more frequently for my other works in the future (I especially hope to use it far more for my Extended Practice project). Organisation will once again will be of great importance seeing as I had forgotten that Photoshop files can be imported into After Effects for editing, during a last minute attempt to get a few more scenes edited, it proved fruitless considering the state of most of my work files.

Lurk - The Concept Art Book

   The other piece that I was working on for my practical submission was a concept art book to accompany the cinematic itself. The book consists of character and monster designs, and progress for the background designs, as well as experimentation on different colors and lighting for various scenes. Little descriptions were written in there to talk more about the characters themselves as well as show what inspired certain designs. Some scenes from the cinematics are also further discussed about here. 

   A lot more content is included in here as compared to the cinematic, such as some experimentation in strong poses for the characters themselves (Which I wish I could have done more of). There are also a lot more monster designs (With most of them only briefly appearing in the static montage at the very beginning of the cinematic). Even some really old concepts from years back have been included in there for comparison, to show how much the characters have actually changed and developed during this module.

Lurk - Character Designs

   It has been quite some time since I designed Sister Diawara and the other characters, aside from a few alterations to her outfit, she hasn't necessarily changed that much as compared to the rest. Her incredibly colorful outfit contrasts to her calm demeanour, I was especially inspired by a photo of a Cuban priestess who covered herself from head to toe with all sorts of jewellery. And for a moment, I was almost tempted to give Diawara incredibly long decorated nails too (Something which the Cuban priestess also happened to have), but decided against it as she still needed to stay mobile. Sister Diawara was also initially depicted as barefoot in the older concepts. And while it cannot really be seen in the latest character sheets, Diawara now sports a pair of sandals. 

   Father Alex in contrast to Sister Diawara, was my least favorite character design of them all, while I eventually stuck with a look for him during my first version of the project, I just found no appeal whatsoever to him. As a character, while he couldn't necessarily keep his cool, he was still a kind man that did his absolute best to keep the other survivors safe, and is someone that they can still turn to for reassurance and comfort. And so next to Jessie, Father Alex would have been the most human character in the cast.
   
   Before adding the beard, I found myself double checking on whether priests were actually allowed to keep beards (Seeing as so much images showed clean shaven priests). Aside from making him fairly distinguished, I believe that this was one of the things that finally made Alex a little more interesting and appealing without having to make him appear as outlandish as Sister Diawara. His look was especially based on actor Jake Gyllenhaal. And while I wasn't going to necessarily flash out all of their backstories, I wanted to show that each character had so much more to them than what is shown on screen.

   Jessie went through the most changes out of all the original characters. Seeing as she is the main character, it was important to make her more pleasant to look at whilst playing as her (You know what I mean). Originally named Felicity, I felt that it sounded a tad old and that it just did not suit her, and so, I decided to name her after my best friend (Who happens to be a boy).

   She has also changed a lot appearance wise. Her hair was made much shorter, and there was an attempt to give her a slightly more stylish or at least more appealing looking wardrobe (As compared to the toddler-style outfit she wore in the older concepts as shown below). The game also happens to take place around autumn and so it made sense to dress her in something warmer as well.

   Felicity's mother, Helen Marshall was a inspired by a mixture of several female Silent Hill characters (Dahlia Gillespie, Claudia Wolf, Magaret Holloway and Lilian Shepherd). When tweaking and polishing her design a little more, I referred to photos of actresses Alice Krige (Who played Christabella in the first Silent Hill movie) and Julianne Moore (Who played Margaret White in the latest Carrie flm adaptation). It was obvious that I had wanted to depict her in a catatonic state by the time the game's storyline actually starts, and it was just a challenge balancing out the unnerving and... well, motherly aspects about that will still make the player want to seek her out throughout the game.

Lurk - What I Attempted

   I'm just writing this as a reminder to myself to stay as organized as possible when it comes to my work files. Earlier today, my lecturer had edited one of my scenes on After Effects with the use of just the puppet and camera tools and made it look so much more dynamic. I attempted to do the same after that, but for half the day, I was struggling to find files (Most that I must have already deleted) while trying to get After Effects to work for me, only to have it crash on me countless times. I finally made the decision after that to just continue focusing on the concept art book itself, seeing as I still have the academic poster to update and a few more blog posts to write aside from this one...

   This is a lesson to me, I will make sure not to make this mistake again for Extended Practice. While I am saddened that I won't be able to improve on the cinematic a little more (I did insert that one edited scene in, but everything else is so stiff in comparison), knowing that I will be attempting to redo the entire thing from scratch is where I realise that I should just carry on. On the bright side, speaking of the concept art book... Stay tuned.

Lurk - Music and Sound

   I have had the pleasure of working again with Luke Tingle on this project, and seeing that he was just as enthusiastic as I was about working on something horror related, he immediately jumped on board. While I had told him about this even before summer break had begun, there really was nothing to worry about as Luke had been incredibly fast in getting together the sound clips needed for it. It only took him less than two days to edit the sound and music in, making it tenfold better (Words cannot describe just how much better it looks now with the sound put in.

   A few discussions were held, but nothing that was particularly in-depth. We simply exchanged examples (Like those that I wrote about in my inspirations post) of what we had in mind before we settled for a style of music and sound that I would want for the cinematic.

   A separate sound bed has been done for Rosy's title sequence by her friend (As a precaution in case we can't send it over to Luke in time before submission for editing), but I'm sure it will all come nicely together. Seeing as her original piece has a duration of 30 seconds, Rosy will have to edit together a shorter version for my animation. And if I'm able to pass it onto Luke for editting, it really shouldn't take him all that long.

Lurk - Working on the Cinematic 3

   Very much like the motel room scene at the beginning, I took some time to add more details to this underground subway tunnel. The characters were of course drawn in more detail as well (Compared to the stick figures in the concept art). This just gave me the opportunity to include Sister Diawara and Father Alex in another scene (Funny that his face isn't shown once again, however).

   It was from here that I tried to decide what other key scenes I should include within such a short span of time. I reluctantly wounded up dropping the soldier encounter and exploration scene in the end to at least include one scene with a monster in it (The static montage at the beginning doesn't necessarily count). I had hoped to include more, but once again was short on time (This was also another monster design I need to draw up clearly for my concept art book, most of the other monsters didn't seem like the shrieking sort and so I had to quickly design up another one).

   The last scene I wanted to keep was of Jessie's mother as she is staring at her (Or perhaps, at you) from across her seat in the train carriage. She appeared too sweet in the original drawing that I used for the animatic, and so aside from fixing her pose a little, I had to fix up her face a little. I am a little saddened that some of her beauty was taken away in this new version, but I think a creepiness factor was far more important for this scene (And that bloody looking shading on her cardigan was completely unintentional).

Resketching her pose.

Lurk - Working on the Cinematic 2

   This was a scene that stuck with me even during the early days of Lurk, and seeing as I couldn't fully animate them, I had to make their poses stand out (Strong poses, right?) as much as possible, which was a huge challenge. While Father Alex was a toughie to draw simply because of my rusty drawing skills, Sister Diawara was the bigger challenge. 

   I have long since characterised her as an eccentrically calm character as compared to everybody else, and so I had the toughest time figuring out what pose to give her without actually making her out of character (Not that anyone would know what her character was like... EXCEPT FOR ME). When I get around to animating this scene, I'm definitely going to video tape some references for it as well.

  The background itself was a heavily altered photo that I took of my friends' creepy basement (And I mean creepy, I seriously wish I could have used more of the photos I took of that place for this project).

   Another scene that I had to scrapp would have introduced the next key character to the series. Seemingly your stereotypical soldier and practically the only one competent to defend themself against such creatures, this soldier encounters Jessie in 3/4 ways of the plot. While the original design had been a male soldier named Peter, I found myself growing more interested in designing a female solder, which I will discuss more about in the character design post. But, as you can see, I thought I could have hidden his or her face for the time being for this scene, before of course excluding it from the cinematic.

   And here was the bit from the animatic that I had attempted to animate.

Lurk - Working on the Cinematic 1

Original Concept Art

   For the first scene, I didn't make all that many changes to it based on the animatic from the previous post, I just cleaned up and redrew a few details on the television. After wasting my time trying to remember how to use After Effects (When you are rushing, it's obvious that you can refamiliarise yourself or experiment as much as you would like), I ended up designing a seperate static montage, erased out the white screen, and placed the television later on top of it.

   I practically did the same for motel room design, cleaning up and adding in some more details insead of leaving it as a blurry charcoal-looking mess (And so I had the chance to mess around with some more brushes other than the usual hard brush that I have grown so accustom to using). I definitely could have added in more details (Such as perhaps making it rain outside the window), but I know I had to hurry on and work on other scenes and so left it as it is. Getting the lighting was the trickest part for this scene, as I was never necessarily sure how much of the area would be lit up by the television, or whether I should just make some creative decisions by showing more of the room than I should.

   In my rush, I simply drew a still image of Jessie once the camera pans out to show her outside of the room. As suggested however, I ended up redrawing her and attempted to add a tiny bit of animation by making her e--

OH SWEET LORD.

   To finish up the overall look of this scene, I messed around with a few texture and layer options. Now, while I am discussing these scenes in order, that doesn't mean that I actually did them in order (HAH!). Before I went back to finish up this scene, I experimented with a texture overlay for another scene and found myself enjoying the color and feel it actually gave to it (Which I will show in the next post) and so decided to do the same for this scene along with a few others. 
   
   The scene that would have followed after that was a close up of her as she shifts about restlessly as she attempts to call her father on her phone. Aside from lack of time, a fully animated scene would once again not go with the rest of the cinematic's simplified movements (Which you will see more of in the next post). I would of course love to animate this scene one day and put together a proper animation as I had originally intended, but for now...

   This scene was also scrapped for the same reasons, I had spent days figuring out her pose (You can't imagine the awful (In more ways than one) stuff I find when googling 'unconcious girl', also, I had no idea you can fall unconcious with your eyes open) as she lays on the ground before deciding to scrap it all completely. While I had attempted to keep the scene where she would come to and look at around for a moment... you probably know what became of that too...

   I know that she looks pretty different here as compared to the previous scene, hopefully the similar pose still clued you in that they are actually the same person. I was happy with the slightly 3D-ish look the wall has.

I still really do like how my sketch for this turned out, though.
So again, one day... ONE DAY.

   

   And this was the new version, a still illustration with some flickering lighting and a shadow passing over her... It doesn't look too bad, I guess.. It was also here that I began to realise how difficult it was to make her poses appear natural with such large scarf/poncho wrapped around her top half. Future considerations is that I will have to take reference photos if when I finally get the chance to come back to this concept.

Getting it Together

   Progress had been incredibly slow over the past few months (Aside from the amount of research I had gathered particularly for my dissertation. But of course, all of that research can be applied to my academic poster and academic poster as well), and it was only near the end of Christmas break did I attempt to get my shiz together. Aside from giving my room a decent clean up, I decided to move my work area back to the front of the windows, which I hadn't wanted to intially due to issues with the internet connection and the fact that someone smashed a ginormous tree branch against my window once upon a time... But yeah, I needed more table space. 

   

   At the same time, I also printed out some concept art references and covered my windows up with them (I ran out of space on my noticeaboards, also, I really didn't want to keep turning my head to look at them). I was hoping that having a constant view of my inspirations would keep me... well, inspired.

   And before I get into what I have been doing for my practical, let's start off with this really rough animatic I did for when I had originally hope to make a fully animated piece (Who knows, maybe, just MAYBE I might be able to go back to it after I graduate... I mean, this was after all a concept from nearly 5-6 years back, so there is a chance that I will come back to it again):

   Alot, and I mean A LOT of changes has been made since this animatic, to meet the deadline for my music and sound designer as well as to show something for my friend who is working on a title sequence for it. I had to simplify a lot of things and chance it to a simpler piece of cinematic with fewer scenes... I believe I will be placing more focus on the concept art book from here on out by displaying more strong poses of the characters and atmospheric scenarios... but yeah, that's another thing to talk about for later on.

Meet the Puppet Masters - Carlos Grangel

They gave him an actual horse whilst designing for this movie, like damn.

   Carlos Grangel is a Spanish-born illustrator and character designer for animated films who has worked on some of the most famous titles in modern cinema, including 2D classics such as We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), The Prince of Egypt (1998), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) to 3D and stop-motion works like Shark Tale (2004), Madagascar (2005), Corpse Bride (2005) and Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012). It is during Meet the Puppet Masters during 7th November event that I had the opportunity to have a closer look into his beginnings as a comic book artist to the amazing character designer that he has become today.

   To make that big leap from drawing for a German comic series (Which was still pretty successful) to designing characters for some of today's most famous animated films, Carlos needed to be versatile when it came to his art style to survive in the business. During his free time, Carlos would study animation on his own, to better improve his skills as a character designer (Having joked that the studio would have fired him had they actually seen any of his exercises). Turnarounds for characters had especially taken awhile to perfect, but they would prove to be one of the most important aspects for character design later on.

   To differentiate their art style from Disney, Dreamworks needed to push the shapes of their characters and in a way, make them more 'graphic' (Meaning much more exaggerated and cartoony, so keep your mind out of the gutter boi). Aside from turnarounds, silhouettes of the character also helped visualise each of their outline and personality. As character designers, the more references drawn by them, the easier it would make work for the animators (So try to get as many angles, expressions and poses done of a character when designing them before they are sent off to get animated... AKA, the concept bible).

   When working on The Prince of Egypt, it had taken 2 months for the character designers to finalise Moses' design. For such a film (And Road to El Dorado), it was of course beneficial to do some proper researching for more historical accuracy and genuine-ness-ness. Character lines ups helped in making sure that the art style would remain constant for all the characters (That's most definitely an issue many of us tend to face).

Carlos Grangel's character designs on cereal boxes,
consider it his signature or trademark if you will~

   Unlike past titles, Corpse Bride would be the first (Perhaps?) film where he would work from beginning to end. They needed Carlos' skills in bringing Tim Burton's sketches (As nice as they were in their scribbly goodness) to life, giving them a more solid and definite shape so that puppets could actually be made of them. He would also later on see how the characters would turn out when the model makers commenced their part of the job, and was in a way a supervisor of sorts in making sure that all the characters would turn out right.

   Carlos does not necessarily work on sequels, seeing as character designers aren't normally needed as the designs of the characters are already established. An interesting statement seeing as sequels tend to vary so much in quality. And while How to Train Your Dragon 2 definitely had a lot of heart and soul put into it, I did feel that one of the film's glaring issues was the fact that there wasn't a constant style used for all the dragon designs, making them all too different from one another. But going back to that statement, sequels tend to bring up new characters (Lame or not, it doesn't matter), character designers are surely still needed, especially those that had worked on the first title... or is this a Jim Carrey thing?

   So to end off this post, important things to consider if you want to become a character designer: Turnarounds, Silhouettes, Reference, Concept Bibles... PUSH IT.

Bibliography

   It feels nice looking at how much research I had actually gathered over the past months, and seeing them all properly (At least I think so) referenced here... why am I posting this? I don't know, I just saw someone else do this and figured I would do the same.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Films

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The Dot and the Line. (1965) Film. Directed by Chuck Jones. [DVD] US: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Goodfellas. (1990) Film. Directed by Martin Scorsese. [DVD] US: Warner Bros.

The Little Mermaid. (1989) Film. Directed by Ron Clements. [DVD] US: Buena Vista Distribution.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians. (1961) Directed by Clyde Geronimi. [DVD] US: Buena Vista Distribution.

Peter Pan. (1953) Directed by Clyde Geronimi. [DVD] US: RKO Radio Pictures.

The Princess and the Frog. (2009) Directed by Ron Clements. [DVD] US: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Red vs. Blue. (2003) Directed by Burnie Burns. [Machinima Online Series] US: Rooster Teeth.

Sleeping Beauty. (1959) Film. Directed by Clyde Geronimi. [DVD] US: Buena Vista Distribution.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. (1937) Film. Directed by David Hand. [DVD] US: RKO Radio Pictures.

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Stuart, K. (2010) What do we mean when we call a game ‘immersive’?, The Guardian [Online]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2010/aug/10/games-science-of-immersion [Accessed: 28^th December 2015]

Swaim, M. (2009) 10 Video Games That Should Be Considered Modern Art, Cracked [Online]. Available at: http://www.cracked.com/blog/defending-the-habit-10-video-games-as-modern-art/ [Accessed: 19^th December 2015]

Tach, D. (2013) How video games could be flattening the uncanny valley, Polygon [Online]. Available at: http://www.polygon.com/2013/9/4/4695108/video-games- flattening-the-uncanny-valley [Accessed: 10^th November 2015]

Tanenbaum, K., and Tanenbaum, J. (2009). Commitment to Meaning: A Reframing of Agency in Games, The Geek Movement [Online]. Available at: http://thegeekmovement.com/ktanenbaum/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/tanenbaum__tanenbaum_2009_commitment_to_meaning_dac.pdf [Accessed: 11^th December 2015]

Ward, J. (2008) What is a Game Engine?, Game Career Guide [Online]. Available: http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/529/what_is_a_game_.php [Accessed: 19^th December 2015]

Wawro, A. (2015) Writing Presence: How Good Storytelling Helps a VR Game Feel Real, Gamasutra [Online]. Available: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237932/Writing_presence_How_good_storytelling_helps_a_VR_game_feel_real.php [Accessed: 10^th November 2015]

Online Videos

Cowen, T, W. (2015) Magnum Opus Games: How Telltale Games Reinvented the Art of Story Mode [Online Video]. 12^th November. Available from: http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/11/watch-complex-original-magnum-opus-telltale-games-documentary?utm_campaign=popculturetw&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&sr_share=twitter. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

Fungo. (2011) Making of Silent Hill 3 - HQ [Online Video]. 17^th July. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiH4wOkSzGs. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

GameNewsOfficial. (2015) LIFE IS STRANGE Making-of #2 [Online Video]. 31^st January. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VZ9RQNlMHY. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

Neon Feon. (2015) DONT NOD - Life is Strange [Online Video]. 18^th June. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zHOE27v8pw. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

PlayStation Access. (2013) The Last Of Us: Behind The Scenes with Ashley Johnson and Neil Druckmann [Online Video]. 24^th May. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deuVinwv1os. [Accessed: 3^rd January 2016].

Video Games

2K Czech. (2011) Mafia II. Playstation 3. US: 2K Games, Inc.

Bioware. (2007) Mass Effect. Playstation 3. US: Microsoft Studios.

Bithell, M. (2012) Thomas Was Alone. Playstation 3. London: In-House.

Brøderbund. (1989) Prince of Persia. Apple II. US: Brøderbund.

Clover Studio. (2006) Okami. Playstation 2. Osaka: Capcom.

Creative Assembly. (2014) Alien: Isolation. Japan: Sega.

Cyan. (1993) Myst. Macintosh. US: Brøderbund.

Delphine Software. (1991) Another World. Amifa & Atari ST. Paris: Dephine Software.

Dontnod Entertainment. (2015) Life is Strange. Playstation 4. Japan, Tokyo: Square Enix.

Douglas, A. S. (1952) OXO. EDSAC. UK: University of Cambridge.

Frictional Games. (2015) SOMA. Playstation 4. Helsingborg: Frictional Games.

Higinbotham, W. (1958) Tennis for Two. Analog Computer. US: Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Konami Computer. (2003) Silent Hill 3. Playstation 2. Tokyo: Konami.

Naughty Dog. (2011) Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Playstation 3. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Naughty Dog. (2013) The Last of Us. Playstation 3. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Nintendo EAD. (2003) The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Gamecube. Japan: Nintendo.

Playdead. (2010) Limbo. Xbox Live Arcade. US: Microsoft Studios.

Quantic Dream. (2005) Fahrenheit. Playstation 2. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Quantic Dream. (2010) Heavy Rain. Playstation 3. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Quantic Dream. (2013) Beyond: Two Souls. Playstation 3. London: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Remedy Entertainment. (2010) Alan Wake. Xbox 360. US: Microsoft Studios.

Rockstar San Diego. (2010) Red Dead Redemption. Playstation 3. US: Take-Two Interactive.

Rockstar North. (2008) Grand Theft Auto IV. Playstation 3. US: Rockstar Games.

Rockstar North. (2013) Grand Theft Auto V. Playstation 3. US: Rockstar Games.

Russell, S. (1962). Spacewar!. PDP-1.US: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

SEGA AM2. (2000) Shenmue. Dreamcast. Tokyo: Sega.

Smoking Car Productions. (1997) The Last Express. Microsoft Windows. US: Brøderbund.

Supermassive Games. (2015) Until Dawn. PlayStation 4. Surrey: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Team Bondi. (2011) L.A Noire. Playstation 3. NY: Rockstar Games.

Team Ico. (2011) Ico. Playstation 2. Tokyo: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Telltale Games. (2012) The Walking Dead. Playstation 3. California: Telltale Games.

Thatgamecompany. (2012) Journey. Playstation 3. Tokyo: Sony Computer Entertainment.

Valve Corporation, (2007). Team Fortress 2. Windows. Washington: Valve Corporation.

Warp, (1996). Enemy Zero. Saturn. Tokyo: Sega.

Live Events

Blue Zoo: Keeping an Animation Studio Animated. Event Space: HOME. 18^th November 2015.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture: Game Changers. Sullivan Room, Leeds Town Hall. 13^th November 2015. 29^th Leeds International Film Festival.

Her Story: Game Changers. Sullivan Room, Leeds Town Hall. 13^th November 2015. 29^th Leeds International Film Festival.

Carlos Grangel. Waterside Arts Centre. 7^th November 2015. Meet the Puppet Masters.

Visiting Lecturer: Barry Purves. Room 117, Leeds College of Art. 2^nd December 2015.

Appendice

Hooks, E. (2015) Interviewed by Rebecca Wong

Pae, Shanen (2015) Interviewed by Rebecca Wong